Sideload apps on Windows® Phone

Sideloading apps for Windows Phone can become a reality, thanks to ChevronWP7 Labs. The ChevronWP7 Labs website, which caters to hobbyist developers and aficionados, allows its customers to “install, run, and debug unsigned applications” on their Mango phones. The ChevronWP7 team has announced that it is going to launch ChevronWP7 Labs, an eagerly awaited service, very soon. The service, which has been approved by Microsoft, is designed to allow developers to unlock their Windows Phone. It will be made available to developers, cutting across skill levels and geographical boundaries. ChevronWP7 had been in talks with Microsoft for quite some time before an agreement was arrived upon.

In case you want to know how you could avail of this service, it’s fairly simple. You just need to register yourself by visiting the official website of ChevronWP7 Labs. You need to provide a Windows Live ID; not necessarily the id that you use for your phone. Once registered, you will be entitled to purchase the unlock tokens. Each unlock token costs $9.00 and enables the user to unlock one phone only. It should, however, be noted that the user can unlock a single phone multiple times.

Once the unlock token is purchased, you can run the unlocking tool on your computer. Once you run the tool, the unlock tokens will be placed in the unlock queue. According to the ChevronWP7 team, the purpose of this queue is to serialize their unlock requests owing to “security and administrative reasons”. The team claims that the service will not have any negative effect on the phone’s warranty or support lifelines.